She had saved someone; she had been a hero. This event was all the assurance she needed. Taylor Hebert was going to be a hero. A real hero.
The mere thought of fighting side by side with Brockton's best had her feeling ecstatic, to the point where even the thought of facing someone like Lung or Kaiser seemed like a small hurdle if it meant she would be doing it in a billowing cape and with someone like Miss Militia or Armsmaster at her back.
Taylor bit down a wince when the wet cloth brushed against her fresh burn. She'd just need to learn not to slap away actively sparking wires with her bare hands first.
It wasn't the first time she'd been burned, but accidentally brushing against a heated pot and seeing a sparking wire and deciding to touch it were two entirely different things. The only comfort she could grasp from the event was the reason she had chosen to.
There had only been a split second for her to act when she had tackled the boy and the pole came slamming down into the roof of the car. It was either risk his safety by letting the wire attached to the pole swing freely in their direction or slap it away and gamble on her durability.
Taylor would like to think she made the right choice when it came down to it, but the addition of a second injury to her right hand wasn't something she was glad to see. The bullet that had pierced her skin on her late-night run was easy enough to dispense in a bathroom sink but left a distinct mark that had yet to completely heal. She might have to invest in a good pair of gloves if she was serious about being a hero.
While Taylor had never had a real job, she did have some money that had begun to build up over the course of her last few birthdays that she might be able to put toward some gear for nightly outings. Though it was definitely going to be a tight budget.
But at the moment, what she really needed to focus on was her powers.
He'd called it Cursed Energy if she remembered correctly. As of now, she'd only used it instinctively; during the brawl on the street. That moment saw her physical attributes boosted beyond their already superhuman limits, allowing her to get shot multiple times with little consequence. But in the following days of practice, Cursed Energy proved to be...slippery.
Taylor swore as the transparent aura that had wreathed her body vanished once more.
She welded her eyes shut and let her mind settle on her emotion of choice. After dozens of attempts, Taylor had become accustomed to bringing out her Cursed Energy, allowing it to build in her stomach before allowing it to envelop her entire body with ease. But it was in the seconds that followed that made her want to put a hole in her wall.
The Cursed Energy began to rapidly extend beyond her body, thick, transparent tendrils of emotion filling the room as Taylor struggled to not only focus on freezing her emotions, but also wrangling the rapidly depleting aura around her. Within seconds, Taylor fruitlessly found herself drained of Cursed Energy and forced to watch as it dissipated into the empty air after another failed session.
"What the hell am I doing wrong?" Taylor said to no one in particular, flopping onto her bed while beads of sweat trailed down her face.
However, a certain someone still found a way to answer. "And to think I thought the brat was an embarrassment to Jujutsu."
Even if she had become somewhat accustomed to his presence, Taylor still couldn't help but initially flinch at his sudden intrusions. "Fuck off or I'll go get the brush."
A moment of silence, save for Taylor's light panting, followed her threat.
But of course, Sukuna was the one to shatter it with a chuckle, seemingly uncaring of her threat. "I just thought to inform you that at your current pace, you'll be devoured in your sleep by a monster of your own making."
That had Taylor sitting up. "What?"
"Release enough Cursed Energy and a Curse will manifest, it's a concept so simple even brats like you can understand it," he explained nonchalantly, as if he wasn't dropping an Endbringer-sized bombshell on her.
Just that nugget of information had Taylor's mind racing. How much Cursed Energy had she unknowingly released over the few days, even outside of her practice sessions? What are Curses?
But still, this man was not her friend.
"How—How do I know you aren't trying to trick me?" She eventually stuttered out, almost regretting it the moment she opened her mouth.
"And waste my time on something so petty?" He scoffed. "Just be grateful brat, any further advice will not come freely."
"You've got to be joking. You'd give me advice?" She couldn't resist asking, even in jest. Knowing even the slightest bit of insight into her current state was comparable to the Holy Grail. "By your own admission, you aren't even a part of my power. What could you even offer me?"
"Your lack of even the barest of intuition is harrowing, brat," the mouth on her face grumbled. "My power and experience far eclipses yours, in a gap wider than you could possibly comprehend. Even a fraction of my accumulated knowledge would let one of you insects climb into history as a generational talent."
He then chuckled—a sound that had yet failed to send a chill down her spine. "I should know, I've devoured plenty of them in my time."
Well, Taylor definitely was going to add 'potential cannibal' to the growing list of red flags.
Yet, she still found herself stepping into the belly of the beast, if not to gain an understanding of her power, then only to learn more about exactly what kind of evil rested within her.
"Fine, say I did believe you. What could I possibly offer to receive the grace of your so-called expert advice?"
She felt his perpetual smile widen ever so slightly across her cheek at the question. "In exchange for my knowledge of Jujutsu, you can offer me control over your body for one."
"Absolutely fucking not!" Taylor didn't even need to think about it as she lurched to her feet. She'd rather spend the rest of her life haunted by this creep than let him control her body for even a single second.
"Simmer down, brat," he chided with a grumble. "It would only be temporary price in exchange for my guidance."
"I don't care! You can take your Jujitsu or whatever and shove it up your ass!" Taylor roared. She was unable to hide the literal simmering rage flowing off her body, her rapidly restored Cursed Energy coming back in wide waves of energy that began filling the room once more.
"Control your emotions," Sukuna demanded. "Lest you desire to face the first Curse born in your world without even the knowledge of rudimentary reinforcement."
Taylor's eyes widened as she hurriedly tried to reel in the raw emotion swirling into the air. Even if Sukuna was a conniving bastard, she wasn't going to tempt fate by summoning some kind of magic monster in her own home.
Unfortunately for Taylor, the chains of fate were already wrapped around her heart, and its cold grasp was not keen on loosening. Especially for one whose soul housed a disaster such as Ryomen Sukuna, The Fallen.
Taylor felt her stomach sink into her knees when she realized her Cursed Energy was not returning to her body. Her explosive anger was taking shape in the center of her room, a typhoon of emotion churning about in a deep crimson color.
Her mouth felt impossibly dry as she tried to gasp out anything in reaction to the phenomenon before her. But Sukuna butchered her feeble attempts at expression with a haughty cackle. "You've done it now, brat," was all he said, vanishing beneath her skin with not another word uttered, leaving her speechless and alone with whatever kind of hellish abomination she had manifested.
The swirling womb of Cursed Energy took shape, ribbons of Cursed Energy unraveling and dispersing into thin air. Once every strand of what was once Taylor's Cursed Energy had been released, a purple, leather-skinned creature thumped onto Taylor's bedroom floor.
It was no bigger than a dog, with posture akin to that of a gorilla in how it used two long, wide, and five-fingered limbs to push itself upright from its fall from the ceiling while its significantly smaller hindlegs found the footing that allowed it to begin stumbling around the room. Lidless irises twitched around in its sockets, its beady eyeballs the size of baseballs that looked on the verge of popping out of its head eventually swiveling onto Taylor, much to her instant displeasure.
"Maaah..." It moaned out from behind a set of blocky white teeth, an alien sound that made her stomach churn in a way she could only compare to hearing nails on a chalkboard.
Taylor inched backward, refusing to turn her back on the creature as it endlessly stared at her. But its next outburst had her frozen, unable to process what would come out of its mouth.
"Maamaah!" It bellowed, leaping forward at a speed that betrayed its small stature.
It collided with the stunned girl while swinging its oversized fists, sending her reeling into the wall behind her with a crack. Taylor's head spun as the creature moved to lunge for her again. Had she been hit by another baseball bat?
She narrowly dodged the airborne creature by ducking and diving toward her door, flopping to the ground on her stomach. The creature slammed into the wall and sent one of its purple fists clean through drywall.
Its eyes rolled around the room until it found her again. "Mah! Mahmaah!" It continued to squeal all the while it stared at Taylor, unnerving her to no end as it began to pull itself free from the wall.
Her feet and hands worked fast to get her upright, allowing her to take a step toward the hallway before the purple cannonball blasted toward her, pushing off the wall and sending even more cracks splintering through it.
With little more than instinct guiding her, Taylor swung—putting every ounce of strength she had into a straight punch aimed directly at the incoming creature. The blow hit dead on with a level of force that could puncture concrete, only for Taylor's fist to dive deep into the creature's surprisingly elastic skin and send it rocketing backward into another one of her bedroom walls.
Like a rubber ball, when it hit the wall, it flattened against the surface before recoiling back towards her as nothing more than a purple blur. Taylor felt something in her hand crack when she hastily raised her palms to catch the inhuman projectile, sending her sliding back across the hallway carpet while her teeth clamped down to suppress a shout.
Even after ricocheting at her at the speed of a cannonball, the creature was not phased, already clambering out of her grasp to swing its oversized fists at her. "Mah!" It screamed as it brought down one of its fists like a sledgehammer, only to be defiantly blocked by Taylor's forearm, a shockwave of pain coursing through her limb. But her guard held, allowing her to retaliate with another one of her punches, aimed right at this thing's head. Only to have her fist once again sink into the creature's skin, heavily distorting its body before it was sent spinning down the hallway like a torpedo.
It was back up again, wailing, and rushing at her within a couple of seconds without even a bruise to show from what should have shattered its skull. Taylor ducked when it pounced once more, letting it soar overhead and into the wall at the end of the hallway, landing right next to the staircase.
Taylor could feel the pit beneath her feet getting deeper with every wasted movement. It wasn't that this thing was all that strong or fast compared to the thugs she faced days ago, but that it could take her strikes without even a bruise to show for it. It didn't seem to be slowing down either, just constantly attacking even while wasting breath on gargled war cries.
If Taylor was to die here, it would not be from some unexpected blow that took her head off, but after she had collapsed from sheer exhaustion, unable to continue defending herself from the constant onslaught. Death by a thousand cuts.
He'd called it a Curse. The creature was made of Cursed Energy, her Cursed Energy, there had to be something she was missing if the thing was somehow a product of her power.
Maybe if she wasn't so fucking pathetic she would've figured it out by now. But no—she had to freak out and explode right after finding out her power wasn't just dangerous to other people.
Curiously, when she turned her focus back to the Curse, it hadn't moved. The thing was just standing there, shifting with apparent unease as it looked at her. Taylor's eyes widened when she realized her Cursed Energy had been released once more during her silent stewing, coming off in wide waves of frustration that outlined her body. Before she could attempt to rein it in, she noticed how quiet it had gotten, the creature's constant wailing reduced to a mumble that barely escaped between its teeth as it took a step back.
Was it afraid of her? Or was it afraid of her Cursed Energy? It didn't matter, Taylor knew the tides had shifted in her favor, and she was going to ride the hell out of the incoming waves.
In the blink of an eye, she had cleared the distance between them, her superhuman leap echoing through the house as she raised a fist to punch downwards. The creature narrowly dodged, scrambling between her legs to avoid the blow, but Taylor was quick to recover, spinning on her heel and giving chase. The Curse used its thick forearms to launch itself forward and toward Taylor's bedroom, where it had been born.
They crossed the doorway at the same time, Taylor's foot punting the Curse into her bedroom wall, just beneath her window. It took far longer to recover, an oozing gash on its backside causing a purple liquid to leak onto the carpet. Taylor fought the urge to gag at the sight of the guts staining her uncovered foot and how she could just make out the damaged organs peeking out from beneath the Curse's damaged skin.
But she had her answer now; only Cursed Energy, no matter how uncontrolled it may be, could harm Curses—to a devastating effect Taylor was now learning.
The Curse seemed to detect her hesitation, letting out a war cry, "MAAAAHMAAAA!" and charging toward her even while dragging its discolored intestines across the room.
A Cursed Energy-infused kick blasted it back into the wall, buckets worth of purple blood and guts now painted across her once grey walls.
Taylor stood at the entrance of her room, looking down at the layer of warm purple blood that covered her entire right leg. "... Holy shit."
It was only by God's grace that the remains of the Curse began dissolving seconds later, leaving all traces of its presence to the purple smoke that vanished into the air. But the six-inch hole and multiple indents in her wall did not.
Taylor had about an hour before her dad got home and she didn't want to spend it thinking about the implications of what had just gone down.
She glanced at her closet and sighed. Band-aids don't heal bullet holes, but they could at least hide the small ones.
"You sure you're okay kiddo?" Her dad asked, feeling the cracks in the drywall by the stairs.
"I told you I'm fine," Taylor reassured for the fourth time, "I just tripped. The wall is the thing to be worried about."
His eyes held on her for a moment longer than what was comfortable before replying with a sigh. "Just making sure you're alright."
"It's not all that big or deep of a crack, so I thankfully won't have to replace this section of drywall," he said, turning back to the wall. "But I'll have to see if we have any of that spackle putty before cleaning it up. Don't sweat it, I'll be a quick fix with the right tools."
The small smile he gave her when he turned back lifted some weight off her shoulders, it looked like she was in the clear—for now.
The sight of the The Bay's Wards stoically staring at her from across her room was something she could get used to if it meant he didn't see the fist-sized hole in the wall. Even it felt a little uncomfortable to have them looming over her while she was trying to sleep.
Danny Hebert stepped into the basement, feeling the steps ominously creak underneath his assuredly gentle footfalls. He really needed to have that talk with one of his co-workers with a history in contracting.
The dust-filled air wasn't something he was unfamiliar with, working on the docks day after day, but that didn't mean he couldn't help but let out a cough before he found the lightbulb at the foot of the stairs.
He reached for the chain dangling beneath the lightbulb, needing a little more force than expected to flood the room with a dull white light. But it allowed him to spy the plastic shelf in the corner, where paint buckets, brushes, and rollers lay at the bottom. If he was going to find any of that putty, it was going to be there.
He made his way over to the corner, crouching down so that he was level to the bottom shelf. He slid aside various buckets, looking for a smaller container among all of the gallon-sized cans. While he was pulling out an unlabeled container to inspect, a frigid breeze swept across his neck.
The metallic can hit the concrete floor with a bang as he spun around reflexively, clamping his hand down on the back of his neck. His eyes bounced off the walls of the dimly lit room, looking for any sign of movement in the shadows or beneath his feet.
The basement was already cold, but it was a closed area, underground. There weren't even windows. It was like standing outside with the expectation of a light breeze and someone suddenly drops an ice cube down your shirt.
Danny could feel his heart racing in his chest as he tried to control his breathing, all the while his fingernails dug trenches into his neck. He stared endlessly into the darkness, unable to shake the uneasy feeling that he was being watched.
"Dad, you alright?!" He heard Taylor call out from upstairs, snapping him out of his trance.
"Just a spider, gave me a bit of a spook!" He yelled back, thoroughly swallowing his fear to not worry his superhuman daughter.
She didn't respond. Danny took this as a good sign that she wasn't about to nosedive into the basement.
It didn't look like there was any putty down here, and if there was, Danny sure as hell wasn't keen on searching for it at the moment. He hastily made his way back toward the stairs emptyhanded.
Another sudden chill almost caused him to faceplant, only catching himself with his right hand on the stairs when his foot ceased to rise to the bottom step. It had rushed past his ear like an arrow of wind, gone before he could realize what had happened. Though this time it wasn't the sudden cold that had him frozen, but the smell it carried with it. The sensation tickled memories in the back of his mind but didn't drag anything out from the fog, despite how they buzzed in tune with his sad old heart.
When he turned around, he only found a mouse scratching at the foot of the stairs, meeting his eyes for only a moment before dashing off.
"Just a mouse," he mouthed, letting those rising emotions drift back into the depths.
He turned to the hanging chain of the lightbulb, letting his hand rest on the cold metal for but a breath. Darkness rushed to fill the space in light's absence as Danny trudged up the stairs.
Though he would not know the answers he sought preferred to cling to the shadows. Preying on the skittering interlopers in its domain.
Another miniature heartbeat silenced with a clenching of jaws, only a whisper of claw needed to find its next meal. Yet it had stayed its hand, not daring to feast on that particular meal, for how its soul had shrieked when it had rested in their shadow, practically holding their very life within its grasp.
Now it could only moan in the darkness, reminiscing of pleasures that could not be tasted by tongue.
Haunted by memories that should not exist.
"Daaaanny."
For alas, its soul could not reach theirs. Not yet. Not while they remained.
Hot air rises and cold air sinks.
I'll show that one-eyed cat how to really make a protagonist suffer.
Realized I had only put out five chapters in the span of a year and decided to lock in. But in my defense, I did use my bi-monthly surge of inspiration on rewriting the first chapter. So, go check that out if you haven't, it's an objective improvement of what it was before (not an opinion, just a fact) and changes some stuff despite having a pretty much identical conclusion.